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Three facts and three photos about extreme weather in 2012

As UN climate talks continue in Qatar this week, here's a look at some of what made 2012 another year of extreme weather, with impacts often seen on the food we eat and the farmers who grow it around the world.

FACT: June 2012 was the 328th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average

FACT: Research launched this year found droughts that hit Russia and Texas in 2010 and 2011 respectively were made much more likely because of global warming

Though these droughts didn't happen in 2012, I've included them because research this year found the Texas drought was 20 times more likely to occur than in the 1960s. And the Russian droughts, which devastated grain harvests in one of the world's bread baskets, helped drive a year of record world wheat prices, which in turn had a knock-on effect in poor countries such as Yemen and across North Africa. A summary of this research makes for fascinating reading.

PHOTO: Widespread drought – first in the Horn of Africa, and then later in the Sahel – led to food crises that made international headlines. And although donations from governments and from the public raised more than $4 billion, climate change could make the cost of responding to similar disasters even higher in the future.

Drought in the US has hit farmers hard this year. But unlike many farmers in the US, their counterparts in developing countries don't have insurance schemes to cushion the blow or have access to drought-resilient crops.

So 2012 has been another year of turbulent weather, which has again played havoc with farmers and our food around the world. Although not every extreme weather event can be attributed to climate change, scientists are getting better at showing how some events were made much more likely or more severe because of a warming world. As the world continues to warm up, extreme weather is becoming a new norm, and without urgent action to cut emissions and invest in measures to help those most at risk to adapt, the cost of dealing with the clean up looks set to grow.